Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Obama Backlash in Hollywood!!!!!

Evidently, Transformers 2 refers to President Obama by name, and depicts a fictional aid who is kind of a heel. Variety is outraged!

Cohen writes, "So as usual in these movies, the federal bureaucrats are portrayed as annoying if not villainous. The President's man, "Galloway," is a bespectacled blowhard who becomes an obstacle to our brave fighting men and their alliance with the noble Autobots. Operating specifically under presidential authority, he makes all kinds of mischief. He says the President wants to try "diplomacy" against the evil Decepticons and hints the President would consider handing over Shia LaBouf's character to be killed by them. He eventually is ditched by the fighting men (tricked into parachuting out the back of a transport). All this is par for the course in this kind of movie. In the first, there was a Rumsfeldian secretary of defense (played by Jon Voight) and a bit of dialogue from "the President" clearly meant to be Bush, with an obvious Bush impression on the dialogue.

"However, if memory serves, no real politicians were named in the first movie. The SecDef isn't Rumsfeld. The president is not called by name.

"In this movie, exactly one real-life politician is named: "President Obama." They went out of their way to make sure they named the craven, obstructionist president as Obama."

So what gives? I haven't seen the movie, so I am relying on David's take. But it strikes me as a bit unusual given the popularity of the president and the fact that so many people involved in the pic contributed to his campaign.

How dare they.

Uncharitable characterizations of the Dear Leader will not be tolerated, even in movies with giant fighting robots. Michael Bay will never eat lunch in this town again.

Update:Santino says that there are robots in blackface, too! You can see where this is going . . .

8 comments:

gabriel
said...

the slate "spoiler special" also complains that the movie treats Obama's man as a bureaucratic jerk instead of being awesome and enlightened as any member of the administration obviously would be. likewise, slate makes a pretty convincing case that there are some really cringe-inducing blackface robots of almost jar-jar-esque proportions

While not a movie, TV's "ER" regularly had characters complaining about the President and his policies, clearly aimed at Bush. Never saw anyone writing to compalin about that, though. This is just another example of the double standard.

Just saw it. Not as awesome as the first one, IMO. The first one was like the original "Jurassic Park" in that the special effects were so mind boggling cool that you ignored the lack of plot because HOLY SHIT THAT CAMARO JUST TURNED INTO A GIANT ROBOT AND I TOTALLY BELIEVE THAT IT HAPPENED!

With "Revenge of the Fallen" we've seen it all before, so it needs a better plot and dialogue to carry it along. It was worth the price of admission, but I didn't leave the theater with a goofy grin plastered to my face the way I did the first one. I won't be going to see it multiple times in the the theater the way I did the first one.

The humor was a little risque, given the number of under 13 year- olds who will be seeing this movie. (I admit to being a lousy parent who drug a nine year-old to see it with me. There were more than a few moments that made me cringe.)

As for the complaints from the lefties, I personally believe that if an evil alien race of giant robots really did show up on Earth that Barry O absolutely would try to meet with them without preconditions. The left is angry because those scenes in the movie that show the President as weak in the War on Giant Robots (through the character of his National Security Advisor acting to hamstring the Autobots and the military under Obama's orders)totally ring true. They are afraid that the vast number of idiot "undecided" and swing voters who will take a couple hours to see this movie this summer will recognize it.

Compare the actions of Obama's bureaucratic hump of an NSA to the shotgun wielding heroics of the Jon Voight character in the first movie and it makes one wonder if Bay isn't secretly one of us.

As for the racism of the Mudflap and Skidz characters, I suppose as a white Southerner I should have been bent out of shape over the Mater character in "Cars." If the right people are offended because a couple of fictional robots talk in jive, then I like this movie even more.

They went out of their way to make sure they named the craven, obstructionist president as Obama. No wonder some lefties are perturbed by that: it was the movie's one nod to reality. (BTW, I saw it at the drive-in last night with my nephews: we all enjoyed it a lot.)